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Louis Hector Berlioz (December 11, 1803 – March 8, 1869) was a French Romantic composer, best known for his great contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation and for utilizing huge orchestral forces for his works, sometimes calling for over 1,000 performers.
Berlioz was born in France at La Côte-Saint-André in the département of Isère. Despite his parents disapproval, in 1824 he formally abandoned his medical studies to pursue a career in music. Although neglected in France for much of the 19th century, the music of Berlioz has often been cited as extremely influential in the development of the symphonic form, instrumentation, and the depiction in music of programmatic and literary ideas, features central to musical Romanticism. He was considered extremely progressive for his day, and he, Wagner, and Liszt have been called the "Great Trinity of Progress" of 19th century Romanticism. Richard Pohl, the German critic in Schumann's musical journal, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, called Berlioz "the true pathbreaker". Berlioz not only influenced Wagner through his orchestration and breaking of conventional forms, but also in his use of the idée fixe in the Symphonie fantastique which foreshadows the leitmotif. Liszt came to see Berlioz not only as a composer to support, but also to learn from, considering Berlioz an ally in his aim for "A renewal of music through its closer union with poetry".

Opera Information
The symphony, Berlioz’s most famous work, is a piece of program music which tells the story of "an artist gifted with a lively imagination" who has "poisoned himself with opium" in the "depths of despair" because of "hopeless love." There are five movements, instead of the four movements which were conventional for symphonies at the time:

1. Rêveries - Passions (Dreams - Passions): It is here that the listener is introduced to the theme of the artist's beloved, or the idée fixe. Throughout the movement, there is a simplicity of presentation of the melody and themes, which Schumann compared to " Beethoven's epigrams", ideas which could be extended, had the composer chosen to. In part, it is because Berlioz rejected writing the very symmetrical melodies then in academic fashion, and instead looked for melodies which were, "so intense in every note, as to defy normal harmonization", as Schumann put it.

2. Un bal (A Ball): The second movement takes a rather plain waltz theme, again, derived from the idée fixe at first, and then transforming it. It is filled with running ascending and descending figures. While one critic called it "vulgar", the intent was to portray a single lonely soul amidst gaiety, as Berlioz wrote while composing it.

3. Scène aux champs (Scene at the Country): The third movement opens with the English horn and offstage oboe tossing back and forth a characteristic melody meant to evoke the horns in the mountains. The entire movement represents a pastorale with dialogues among piping shepherds, as the artist thinks of his beloved while he walks in the country.

4. Marche au supplice (March to the Scaffold): The fourth movement, which Berlioz claimed to have written in a single night is filled with blaring horns and rushing passages, and scurrying figures which would later show up again in the last movement. The movement describes a dream, in which the artist is executed for killing the love of his life. It uses a grotesque version of the theme by Berlioz's extraordinary technique of orchestration, mixing string pizzicato, woodwind staccato, brass chords and a single loud stroke of percussion, forming a highly unusual series of tone colors.

5. Songe d'une nuit de sabbat (Dream of a Witches' Sabbath): The last movement, often played as a tone poem by itself, has a brooding opening, the sound of spirits marching through the graveyard. There follows, in turn, a familiar E-flat clarinet solo presenting the idée fixe as a vulgar dance tune; the call of church bells; a burlesque of a famous plainchant, the Dies Irae; and a fugue meant to represent, as Berlioz privately admitted, a giant orgy.

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Louis Hector Berlioz (December 11, 1803 – March 8, 1869) was a French Romantic composer, best known for his great contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation and for utilizing huge orchestral forces for his works, som...

Louis Hector Berlioz (December 11, 1803 – March 8, 1869) was a French Romantic composer, best known for his great contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation and for utilizing huge orchestral forces for his works, som...